Historically, the discovery and optimization of doped bulk materials has been predominantly developed through an Edisonian approach. While successful and despite the constant progress in fundamental understanding of detector materials physics, the process has been restricted by its inherent slow pace and low success rate. This poor throughput owes largely to the considerable compositional space that needs to be accounted for to fully comprehend complex material/performance relationship. Here, we present a combinatorial approach where doped bulk scintillator materials can be rapidly optimized for their properties through concurrent extrinsic doping/co-doping strategies. The concept that makes use of Design of Experiment, rapid growth and evaluation techniques, and multivariable regression analysis, has been successfully applied to the engineering of NaI performance, a historical but mediocre performer in scintillation detection. Using this approach, we identified a three-element doping/co-doping strategy that significantly improves the material performance. The composition was uncovered by simultaneously screening for a beneficial co-dopant ion among the alkaline earth metal family and by optimizing its concentration and that of Tl+ and Eu2+ ions. The composition with the best performance was identified as 0.1% mol Tl+, 0.1% mol Eu2+ and 0.2% mol Ca2+. This formulation shows enhancement of energy resolution and light output at 662 keV, from 6.3 to 4.9%, and from 44,000 to 52,000 ph/MeV, respectively. The method, in addition to improving NaI performance, provides a versatile framework for rapidly unveiling complex and concealed correlations between material composition and performance, and should be broadly applicable to optimization of other material properties.
The problem of a particle confined in a box with moving walls is studied, focusing on the case of small perturbations which do not alter the shape of the boundary (lq pantographyrq). The presence of resonant transitions involving the natural transition frequencies of the system and the Fourier transform of the velocity of the walls of the box is brought to the light. The special case of a pantographic change of a circular box is analyzed in dept, also bringing to light the fact that the movement of the boundary cannot affect the angular momentum of the particle.
Some recent results concerning a particle confined in a one-dimensional box with moving walls are briefly reviewed. By exploiting the same techniques used for the 1D problem, we investigate the behavior of a quantum particle confined in a two-dimensional box (a 2D billiard) whose walls are moving, by recasting the relevant mathematical problem with moving boundaries in the form of a problem with fixed boundaries and time-dependent Hamiltonian. Changes of the shape of the box are shown to be important, as it clearly emerges from the comparison between the pantographic, case (same shape of the box through all the process) and the case with deformation.
We show that two interacting physical systems may admit entangled pure or non separable mixed states evolving in time as if the mutual interaction hamiltonian were absent. In this paper we define these states Interaction Free Evolving (IFE) states and characterize their existence for a generic binary system described by a time independent Hamiltonian. A comparison between IFE subspace and the decoherence free subspace is reported. The set of all pure IFE states is explicitly constructed for a non homogeneous spin star system model.
Complete positivity of a class of maps generated by master equations derived beyond the secular approximation is discussed. The connection between such class of evolutions and physical properties of the system is analyzed in depth. It is also shown that under suitable hypotheses a Zeno dynamics can be induced because of the high temperature of the bath.
Employing the stochastic wave function method, we study quantum features of stochastic entropy production in nonequilibrium processes of open systems. It is demonstarted that continuous measurements on the environment introduce an additional, non-thermal contribution to the entropy flux, which is shown to be a direct consequence of quantum fluctuations. These features lead to a quantum definition of single trajectory entropy contributions, which accounts for the difference between classical and quantum trajectories and results in a quantum correction to the standard form of the integral fluctuation theorem.
We consider a two-photon quantum model of radiation-matter interaction between a single two-level atom and a degenerate bimodal high-Q cavity field. Within this tripartite system the explicit construction of two collective radiation modes, one of which freely evolving and the other one quadratically coupled to the matter subsystem, is reported. Meaning and advantages of such a decoupling treatment are carefully discussed.
In this paper we study in a Hilbert space a homogeneous linear second order difference equation with nonconstant and noncommuting operator coefficients. We build its exact resolutive formula consisting in the explicit non-iterative expression of a generic term of the unknown sequence of vectors of the Hilbert space. Some non-trivial applications are reported with the aim of showing the usefulness and the broad applicability of our result.
We show that a two-atoms Bose-Hubbard model exhibits three different phases in the behavior of thermal entanglement in its parameter space. These phases are demonstrated to be traceable back to the existence of quantum phase transitions in the same system. Significant similarities between the behaviors of thermal entanglement and heat capacity in the parameter space are brought to light thus allowing to interpret the occurrence and the meaning of all these three phases.
We discuss the partitioning of the Hilbert space of a quantum system induced by the interaction with another system at thermal equilibrium, showing that the higher the temperature the more effective is the formation of Zeno subspaces. We show that our analysis keeps its validity even in the case of interaction with a bosonic reservoir, provided appropriate limitations of the relevant bandwidth.
